Chapter 15

Fifteen

Josh

I go into the bathroom, start the shower, and step into the spray of hot water on legs that feel too weak to hold me.

Oh my God.

What was that?

Was it my fault? Did I make him think—

I know the answer’s no. I didn’t.

I was lying by him, in his room because he had a nightmare. He knew that. Didn’t he? Did he forget what brought me in there? Is he gay? My dick twitches at the memory of his hand around it.

He was good.

Because he has his own dick, Miller.

Fucking fuck. I came in his hand!

He jerked you off.

My stepbrother played me like a fucking flute.

There’s nothing wrong with it from your perspective. He did everything.

I fucking came in Ezra’s hand.

I come again into my own, inhaling steam in big gulps.

After getting out, I wrap a towel around my waist and stand at his door for a long time. Listening and thinking. Wanting to go in and ask…so many fucking things. Wanting to suck his dick—because I’m fucked up. Clearly.

I lie on my back in bed and cup my semi. When my balls start feeling full and my dick’s hard enough to throb, I jerk off again, thinking of his hand around me. Sleep comes fast, and there’s no dreaming. When I open my eyes, I find I’m up before my alarm.

Morning wood’s got me too hard to walk without that just-kicked-in-the-nuts feeling, so I jerk it again, still hearing his raspy whispers in my head.

Shit—I should have reached around to see if he was hard, too. That would answer lots of questions.

I step slowly into the bathroom, half expecting to find him waiting for me. But the room is empty. The shower is dry. Dickface must not be awake yet.

In the bathroom mirror, I find a bite mark on my shoulder. I run the sink water so he won’t hear me taking a leak and take a lower-body shower since there’s jizz on everything. I throw on some basketball shorts and an old T-shirt that makes me look more cut than I am, plus Adidas slides. Then I’m down the stairs. I’ll wait in the kitchen for him, get the upper hand.

But Ezra never comes down. I notice his cooler missing from the island, and when Mom comes in to set her empty coffee cup in the sink, she tells me he left early.

“Maybe something with football,” she says.

Maybe something with my dick.

Ezra’s late to homeroom. When he finally arrives, my eyes snap to him like magnets. I tear them away, but not before I note he’s in a navy hoodie, battered khaki shorts, and shoes I can’t see since he’s sliding into his desk, stretching his legs out in front of him .

Today we have to watch a video on emotional regulation. He shifts in his seat as the lights go out, and then again as the projector starts. I keep hearing his voice right there by my ear. The pervert things he said. Was he just fucking with me?

He rolls one of his shoulders, and my dick twitches. I rub my temples, leaning back in my desk. I try not to look at him—which is impossible given that he’s right in front of me, running a hand back through his hair.

The video is boring, so my mind circles back to last night. He woke up and just…went at me. Maybe lashing out because I saw him in a weak position. So he did the same thing as when we were on the roof: he wrestled me down onto my back—metaphorically—and made sure that he felt on top. He fucking bit me. When I left, he said, “You’re welcome.” Like he’d done me a favor.

The more I think about that, the more it pisses me off. My dick is not a toy for him to play with. How embarrassing that I let him. What’s wrong with me? By the time the bell rings, I feel fucking violated. Okay, not really. But I’m mad at myself. Am I so desperate I’ll take any hand that wants to grab my dick? Even a stepbrother hand?

I’m not doing that shit again. I’m not going into his room. If he has another one of those psychotic nightmares, I’ll—I don’t know what. Maybe I can turn the light on. Turn some music on or something. I’m not sitting down by him and staying. Even if it felt fucking amazing. Even if I want to know if he’d get hard, too.

In second period, I have a new thought: What if he tells someone? What would Marcel think if he found out I’m gay? What if Ezra tells Brennan? Fuck, he’d be offended as hell to find out second-hand. I’ve told Bren before that I could see why someone would mess around with a guy in prison or on a desert island, but that’s not coming out. Not by a long shot.

I’ve told Jenna, this girl named Emily that I sat by on the bus for a few years in middle school (she’s gay, too), and Arnie knows because I guess he sensed it. I’m about ninety percent sure he told his hipster friend Cierra—she’s in my grade, so still here at FHS—because she smiles at me sometimes as if she knows a secret. But that’s all. At least that I know of.

If Ezra isn’t gay, or wants to tell himself he isn’t, and he wants to offset his discomfort at being attracted to me by telling people how gay I am, it would really fuck me over. I’d like to try for college soccer, but Coach McGee goes to Truthsong Church, and they’re the really evangelical ones. If he finds out about me, there’s no way he’ll get those coaches he knows from University of Montevallo to come check me out.

I’m head-fucked by lunchtime, so I grab a slice of pizza, put it away in three bites behind a column near the soda machines, and walk to the office to sign myself out for SP—Senior Privilege. We seniors are allowed to walk down to the gas station, which normally has a Fairplay BBQ truck parked out front. And even though it’s technically against the rules, sometimes people walk through the woods behind the school down to the beach.

I’m not sure why nobody else seems to be doing SP this year. Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen the BBQ truck there in front of the Texaco…so maybe that’s why. Doesn’t matter to me. I’ll walk to the gas station and buy some Cheetos. Keep me from having to look at his smirking ass.

I move across the cafeteria with long strides. It’s a massive common area, the center sunken and dotted with tables and the eating area surrounded by long walls of lockers. Hopefully none of my friends notice me bouncing.

Shit, it’s nice out. Cool for late summer—maybe eighty. Smooth blue sky with one big, fluffy white cloud. There’s a breeze, too. I start through the parking lot, looking down at my shoes as I walk, and thinking.

God, I can’t believe I let him do that. I’ve kept this secret since I realized myself, in fifth grade. Jamie Price, this guy in my class, came back to school that fall with leg hair, and it was all over for me. I’m a leg guy, and I saw his calves in my damn dreams. I heard he was going to Halloween as Satan, so I dressed as an angel. So many photo ops, and I kept them all on my laptop, pretending the two of us were a couple.

I bite the inside of my cheek and stuff my fists into my pockets. I got jerked off last night…for the first time ever. A hand that’s not mine made me come, and it felt so good.

That’s what’s waiting on you , I tell myself. But in the future, it’ll be with someone I like, who likes me back.

I try to talk myself up as I walk along the road between the high school and the gas station. Gotta get my fucking head on straight before I see him again. I’m rounding a bend in the road when I hear someone whistling—loud as fuck and clear as a bell.

“Got the music in you baby, tell me why… Got the music in you baby tell me why… Got the music in you baby, and you just can’t say goodbye…”

I’m smiling at how good this whistler is. Someone from band? Also, nice song choice, bruh. Cigarettes After Sex—“Apocalypse” is one of their new songs.

I duck under a branch as the road curves, and there is Ezra. He’s got a peach ball cap on and a blue raspberry Icee in his right hand, which swings loosely as he walks with languid strides. In that fraction of a second that my eyes land on him, he looks different than I’ve ever seen him. His chin is tilted slightly up, showing his square jawline and thick, tanned throat. The bright ball cap is crooked on his head, and his face gleams in the sun as he whistles with his eyes half shut.

I realize: He looks happy.

Then he sees me.

His eyes widen for a split second. His features harden. Then his face is set to neutral, his lips pressed flat. His gaze sweeps down my body, slow and blatant. Then we’re passing by each other, arms swinging so close that I can feel the air shift in between us.

He says something that I think could be “Yo”—but also might be “Bro.” And I’m standing in the wake of cologne. It’s the smell from his bed times a thousand, filling my nose then my head until it’s swimming.

I stare as he walks off. I stare at his ass in those shorts. At his forearms, bare because he’s rolled his sleeves up. I stare at the ball cap, noting that it has a Georgia peach on the back. Is that ball cap gay? It’s so… peachy .

How does Ezra know about the senior privilege? If someone told him, why are they not with him? My heart’s pounding as I push through the gas station’s glass door and head toward the chip aisle. By the time I’m back at the school parking lot, I feel almost sick. This shit with Ezra is too much. Maybe I should move in with Dad.

I snort at that thought as I scan my ID tag, making the steel doors click open. In the cafeteria, everyone is everywhere. The bell has rung. It’s physics time.

I try to hurry so I’m there first, but it doesn’t work. Somehow, Ezra beat me to it. He’s perched on his stool like a beautiful gargoyle with big, bulky shoulders and his fuckboy hair all in his eyes, looking down at something on the table. I realize he’s holding a fire alarm battery in one palm. His other hand is loosely wrapped around a little metal thing with two prongs and a base. He starts to twirl the metal thing as I come near him.

I smell the good cologne smell again as I sit on my stool. Then I catch a whiff of smoke, which makes it make sense.

“How’s it hangin’, DG?”

Ezra looks up at me, hair in his eyes, and he’s got the smirkiest smirk. There should be some prize for this, some competition. I, meanwhile, can hardly get my mouth to move. I swallow and manage a robotic, “Fine. ”

I latch my eyes onto the battery and metal piece. “What’s that stuff?”

“Don’t know.”

I glance around the room, noticing every table has one. “So you just found it?” I ask.

“Yuup.” I can see his Adam’s apple bob along the column of his tanned throat. His eyes meet mine for just a second.

“Electric current,” he says. He’s looking down again, and I can’t help the way my gaze clings to his hands. They’re really nice hands. Almost elegant. He’s got big, brawler knuckles and these lean, long fingers. They look more like an artist’s rendering than something on a real person—and nothing like my own wide, mitten hands. I have the thought that my hand could probably cover his. Then Dr. Bumble comes into the room and I’m distracted by our project instructions.

Apparently, we’ll do some basic wiring and then assemble a tiny electric plug that will adjoin the battery to the metal bars in…some way. When we’re finished, a small, blue current will jump between the prongs.

“It will be a shock, but it won’t hurt you,” Bumble drones. “People like to stick their fingers to it, but that’s not required.” He gives a funny little smile, like teaching physics is the highlight of his life.

Then he walks around to every table, passing out wiring kits.

Ezra slides ours toward himself and opens the bag, setting the instruction leaflet out in front of him.

He looks for a moment at the paper and then gets to work, attaching the wires to the metal part. I watch his hands move, feeling like I’m in a daze. I guess I am, because when he’s finished, he knocks on the surface of the table.

I blink. My cheeks burn from knowing that he knows I zoned out watching.

“Want to hook it up?” he asks.

“The battery? ”

He smirk-smiles. “Yeah.” He looks smug.

He nudges the metal pronged thing toward me with a fingertip, and I frown down at the battery. “I guess it snaps in…like a smoke alarm?”

I try to fit the battery into the snap, but… “One of them is bent? What the hell…”

“Here.” He takes the battery from my hand, and the little metal prong thing. He pushes the battery into the snap, then he hisses “fuck” and drops it on the tabletop with a clank .

He bows his head for a second, holding it with one hand. Then he lifts his face, and I see color flood into his cheeks as he looks around. A few people are staring our way, but Bumble is at his desk with his head down.

“Did it shock you?” I ask.

“No.” I watch his shoulders rise and fall on a breath. Then clenches his jaw and pushes the battery into the snap, and a thin wire of brilliant light blue jumps between the metal prongs. “What do you say, Millsy?”

“To you?” I scoff. Does he want me to thank him for snapping the battery in?

He grins, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “To me,” he confirms.

“Go fuck yourself?”

“You’d like to watch.”

“You’re gay,” I murmur softly.

“You are.” Ezra arches one dark brow.

“I’m not thanking you for dick,” I tell him.

My accidental double entendre makes him grin. “I guess we’ll see about that.”